Mr. Mark O'Connor:

The simple answer to the question is that we have not had that engagement nor has it been sought. As Mr. Egan said, we conducted a fairly extensive survey of families and asked their opinions on education and how they were coping in the absence of their children accessing school. We sent that to the Minister and asked to have a meeting to discuss some of these issues. We have not had a response on that yet. We attended a briefing with the Department but it was not a consultative briefing. It was very much to tell us what it was doing. With regard to special schools, we have highlighted in our report and our submissions that while obviously public health guidelines must be adhered to, in special schools quite a lot of children are educated in smaller groups so social distancing might not be as big an issue. We might have a typical classroom with between four and six children and a couple of SNAs and a teacher. I will hand over to my colleague, Ms Dempsey, who wants to comment on this.